Read Book

Chapter 3: Be Madly in Love with Life

I am in a deep loving relationship with my husband, but at the same time I feel attracted to someone else.

Two things to remember. The first: love grows only in deep intimacy and trust. If you change persons, from A to B, from B to C, it is as if you are transplanting your being from one place to another. You will never grow roots. And the tree will grow fragile and weak. To gain strength, deep roots are needed; and to gain roots, time is needed. And for love even eternity is not enough. Even eternity is not enough, remember, because love can grow and grow and grow - and there is no end to it. There is a beginning, but there is no end.

So don’t take love as a superficial thing. It is not just a relationship. Through love, your whole being has to be discovered. It is sacred, but in the West it has become very profane; it has almost lost the meaning. It has become more and more sexual and bodily, very superficial and casual. In fact I am afraid that the West may lose the very dimension of love. People may completely forget that there was a possibility of inner endless growth in it.

If it is a question of excitement, then it is good to change partners. Then you are more excited and your partner is something to discover. With an old partner everything is known and settled; the whole territory is known. One starts feeling a little fed up, a little bored. This is natural. But if you love the person, you love even the boredom. If you love the person, you also love even his old habits, the old ways, the old territory. Old things have a charm of their own, mm? Just the old armchair you sit on - it has something that no other chair can give, it fits perfectly. Not only that you know it, it also knows you.

There is a familiarity in the old room in which you have lived, the old house. There is a certain affinity, a certain tuning, so that by and by you are not two separate things. You have melted into each other and have become one, and the boundaries have become blurred. With new things, boundaries are very shy and the separation is very clear. Old things have their charm, but one has to discover it.

Only children are interested in new things. The more grown up you are, the more interested you are in the old things, and the less one is bored. Then you go on finding that these are just levels, layers; that when you love a person one layer has been known - but don’t conclude that that is all. A deeper layer is waiting to be provoked and challenged - and there is no end to it. In fact the person himself is not aware of how many layers of being he has. If a lover challenges his being, not only the lover will know, the person himself will come to know his being - and only through love. We come to know each other when we challenge each other, and go on provoking each other.